Starting with KiCad - library quality

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christoph

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I'm just starting with KiCad. I used eagle before, and that's long ago, and wanted to try KiCad now.

My main question is: How good are the KiCad libraries? I'm not that experienced in pcb layout and I can't really tell if they are usable or not. The same goes for contributed libraries: Which are good?

I'm looking for libraries with
  • SMD passives: 0805-ish packages
  • SMD transistor packages
  • chips: SOIC, MSOP, QFP and so on
  • good pin headers

Regards

Christoph
 
When you say "KiCad Libraries" do you mean http://www.kicadlib.org/ or http://library.oshec.org/ or http://www.kicadcloud.com/ or http://dangerous-prototypes-open-hardware.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Kicad_Part_Library/ or ...

There are many libraries to choose from. From some years in the professional layout world (using the $$$ tools), my experience is that you do not blindly trust someone else's footprint library; if you want it right, you build your own, or you use the in-house library that has been proven by local production (and even then, sometimes the old footprint that worked fine with the old PCB vendor causes trouble with a different vendor).
 
@JBeale I was talking about the "stock" kicad libraries. You got me thinking, and basically what I experienced with eagle is now reappearing, just like you described: you don't blindly trust someone else's lib and build your own instead.

I was hoping to get around this, but my conclusion is it doesn't matter what pcb software I use, I end up making footprints for standard components like pin headers and chip resistors. That sucks!

@stevech That was not my question. I'm trying KiCad because it's totally free, and the diptrace free edition has a 300 pin limit. That's enough for simple breakout boards, but not for something built around a chip like the mk20dx256 or bigger. Eagle's limit was kinda fair, but I would have appreciated an area limit instead of a length/width limit. Anyway, I'll give KiCad a chance first.
 
Adding to above post: I'm also interested in the contributed libraries, of course. The question remains the same, though: Which are ok to work with for small personal projects (about 10 boards, soldered by hand or in a self-made oven)?
 
FWIW, I prefer Eagle. Yes, it has a steep learning curve and some of its conventions are so German in terms of their complexity… :D but it has a huge set of libraries that allows you to quickly hit the ground running… whether it's sparkfun, adafruit, or the multitudes of element 14 libraries, you can quickly cover a great deal of chips in very little time. See the list of official libraries over at the cadsoft web site, never mind what else is out there in personal libraries. Now I understand that kiCAD can import Eagle but I found kiCAD not more intuitive than Eagle, hence I stuck with the latter.
 
Constantin - so you would use the element14 libraries, but not those contributed by users because they might not be tested thoroughly?
 
christoph said:
Constantin - so you would use the element14 libraries, but not those contributed by users because they might not be tested thoroughly?
Click to expand...

It all depends. The Element 14 libraries seem on average to be a bit better in terms of dimensional accuracy than some of the other libraries out there. That said, I have only been burned a couple of times by a bad library turning a simple solder job into a difficult one. One example was the early edition of the Mini-54 library posted here that worked well enough for the user doing hand-soldering but which was practically unusable for anyone attempting reflow soldering. I subsequently published a couple of libraries for the Teensy board as well as modified libraries for the K20 chip and the Mini-54 TQFP chip (not the smaller ones, yet).

So my suggestion is that you check any part that you want to use and compare its dimensions to the ones published online. A little time spent checking the part is a small investment compared to the time you waste when receiving a batch of PCBs that the part won't fit.
 
Constantin said:
It all depends. The Element 14 libraries seem on average to be a bit better in terms of dimensional accuracy than some of the other libraries out there. That said, I have only been burned a couple of times by a bad library turning a simple solder job into a difficult one. One example was the early edition of the Mini-54 library posted here that worked well enough for the user doing hand-soldering but which was practically unusable for anyone attempting reflow soldering. I subsequently published a couple of libraries for the Teensy board as well as modified libraries for the K20 chip and the Mini-54 TQFP chip (not the smaller ones, yet).

So my suggestion is that you check any part that you want to use and compare its dimensions to the ones published online. A little time spent checking the part is a small investment compared to the time you waste when receiving a batch of PCBs that the part won't fit.
Click to expand...

True. I ended up creating my own modules (footprints) with the KiCad editor to see how well it works. Modifying lines after they've been drawn is not easy, though - I had a better experience with eagle.

Is there a datasheet available for the Mini54? I looked on the nuvoton webstie, but I couldn't find it. I'd like to have a drawings of the available packages. I've had very bad experience with package names that sound like standard (like TQFP) and in the end they are something different.
 
Bulding your own CAD symbols and footprints is mandatory for almost everyone who designs PCB's for the reasons stated before: you can't trust anyone's footprints and there will often be parts which don't exist in your library.

So I strongly suggest you look into tutorials on how to make your own KiCad parts.
 
bigpilot said:
Bulding your own CAD symbols and footprints is mandatory for almost everyone who designs PCB's for the reasons stated before: you can't trust anyone's footprints and there will often be parts which don't exist in your library.

So I strongly suggest you look into tutorials on how to make your own KiCad parts.
Click to expand...

Thanks to all who told me not to use anyone else's libraries. Here's what happened:

I needed pin headers (those standard 2.54mm things) and started making them in KiCad. Then I thought I'd try it in eagle, wrote a user language program for the first time, and that was kinda the best thing I learned in the past 3 weeks. The user language is quite limited, but sufficient for many applications and very easy to learn. I'm currently OshParking my board and I'm eager to see if it works as expected.
 
Constantin said:
FWIW, I prefer Eagle. Yes, it has a steep learning curve and some of its conventions are so German in terms of their complexity… :D but it has a huge set of libraries that allows you to quickly hit the ground running… whether it's sparkfun, adafruit, or the multitudes of element 14 libraries, you can quickly cover a great deal of chips in very little time. See the list of official libraries over at the cadsoft web site, never mind what else is out there in personal libraries. Now I understand that kiCAD can import Eagle but I found kiCAD not more intuitive than Eagle, hence I stuck with the latter.
Click to expand...

I think the eagle is much better than the KiCAD and I am using the eagle and planning to try the KiCAD also so I just want to know how I can import the Eagle in the KiCAD and I feel may be it is helpful for me.

circuit card assembly
 
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